I needed to check the download speed on of an interface on my Raspberry Pi, so I have used a tool called speedometer to do so.
Updated: 2017-06-05
Raspbian OS: 2017-04-10-raspbian-jessie-lite
MiFlora sensor firmware: 2.9.2
miflora library: miflora-0.1.16
About the Xiaomi MiFlora sensor
Xiaomi MiFlora is a cost-effective plant sensor, which uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to communicate wirelessly, and is capable of sensing temperature, soil humidity, light, soil fertility and it’s own battery level. You can find more details about this smart sensor on the official Xiaomi site here.
Daniel Matuschek (openha) has written a library for the device, and his python code is capable of reading these data on computer running Linux. I have been running it Raspbian Lite operating system, on my Raspberry Pi 3 and also have tested it on my Raspberry Pi Zero W (both devices have onboard Wifi and Bluetooth, no dongles needed).
This one-liner checks the current sum of download speed of all torrents currently running in transmission-daemon. You can also direct the output to a file, to have a logfile of it.
There’s a feature in most modern BIOSes, which makes it possible to power on a PC if a certain “magic packet” is received on the physical (MAC) address of the PC’s LAN network card.
The RTL8188eu wifi chip is not supported on Raspbian Lite “Jessie” out of the box, so we need a few things to make it work, but I’ll show you how.
I have a set of SilverCrest IP20 remote controlled sockets purchased in LIDL.
Remote: SilverCrest 113854 RCT DS1 AAA-A 3726
4x Switches: SilverCrest 113854 RCR DS1 3711-A IP20 FR 3726
These work on 433Mhz radio frequency, so the switches can be controlled using my Raspberry Pi instead of the remote control which came with the set.
Home automation projects often there is a need to measure the temperature and humidity of the air. This can be done with e.g. the DHT11 or the more advanced DHT22 sensors.
The AM2302 is a wired version of the DHT22, in a large plastic body. There is a 5.1K resistor inside the sensor connecting VCC and DATA so you do not need any additional pullup resistors. Here’s how to make it work.
In one of the previous posts I have shown how to control the socket’s with pilight and an RF transmitter.
Since the pilight protocol which will be able to control my outlets (quigg_gt9000) is not finished yet, I wrote a simple command which sniffs out the raw codes (with pilight-debug) and a bash script to use send these raw codes to control the outlets (with pilight-send).
At the time of writing this post, the newest device in the Raspberry Pi universe was Pi 3, released on 29th February 2016, boasting a 64bit CPU, an onboard Bluetooth chip, and last but not least: onboard WiFi.
We’ll focus on how to set up WiFi in this post.
I use my NFS file sharing server to stream media to Kodi media centers installed on various devices in my local network.
Downloading (legal) content using torrents is very convenient, but if you plan to “seed” back the stuff, then you’ll need to keep your computer running 24/7 which won’t be good for your electricity bills. For this reason it’s a nice idea to use a Raspberry Pi as a “torrent server” a.k.a “seedbox” which will run day and night, as it’s power consumption is tiny compared to a laptop, let alone a desktop PC.
We’ll be using Transmission as a torrent client, which can be installed as a “daemon” running in the background all the time on the Raspberry Pi.
Check out my custom MOTD on my Raspberry Pi, it’s showing useful data about the system right after I log in.
The Raspberry Pi is a cheap, little credit-card sized computer, which can be used for a myriad of projects. I’ll show you how to get it up and running, including the necessary peripherials. This guide is aimed on how to set up the Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 with wired ethernet connection.